Ratings / Reviews

KochFormer Mayor Ed Koch is the quintessential New Yorker. Ferocious, charismatic, and hilariously blunt, Koch ruled New York from 1978 to 1989—a down-and-dirty decade of grit, graffiti, near-bankruptcy and rampant crime.

First-time filmmaker (and former Wall Street Journal reporter) Neil Barsky has crafted an intimate and revealing portrait of this intensely private man, his legacy as a political titan, and the town he helped transform. The tumult of his three terms included a fiercely competitive 1977 election; an infamous 1980 transit strike; the burgeoning AIDS epidemic; landmark housing renewal initiatives; and an irreparable municipal corruption scandal.

Through candid interviews and rare archival footage, Koch chronicles the personal and political toll of running the world's most wondrous city in a time of upheaval and reinvention.